Jazz in Britain: Export Culture, Import Society

CATHERINE PARSONAGE IS HEAD OF THE CENTRE FOR JAZZ STUDIES UK AT LEEDS COLLEGE OF MUSIC, UK. HER BOOK THE EVOLUTION OF JAZZ IN BRITAIN, 1880–1935 IS PUBLISHED BY ASHGATE. SHE WILL TAKE UP AN EDISON VISITING FELLOWSHIP AT THE BRITISH LIBRARY IN 200–67.

Academic and public interest in the phenomenon of jazz outside America has been growing in recent years. The processes of exporting and import ing, and subsequently reproducing and develop ing a genre that is often considered to be “America’s classical music” are, of course, inherently political. George McKay addresses this directly in Circular Breathing: The Cultural Politics of Jazz in Britain, a publication that makes a signifi cant contribution to jazz studies, which has established a reputation as a rich interdisciplinary field, and more specifically to the study of cultural politics in British society.

McKay states two aims for the book: first, to examine jazz as an “export culture” and the context of the “import society” of mid-twentieth-century Britain as a “case study in the operation of the process or problem of ‘Americanization’” and secondly, “to interrogate the political inscriptions or assumptions...